Medical Design & Manufacturing West: The conference that was bigger than I even imagined

Diagnostic equipment needs to pass a raft of certifications to operate in modern hospitals. If an old board goes end-of-life, without a legacy solution, re-certification can be both time-consuming and cost prohibitive.

As any business owner knows, you are always going to find new conferences, events, or trade shows you didn’t know about, and are really glad you discovered.

Medical Design & Manufacturing West 2012 (affectionately known as MD&M West, or #MDMwest in twitter parlance) took place this past week in Southern California’s Anaheim Convention Center. The conference brought together an extensive variety of speakers, exhibitors, and manufacturers of medical diagnostic equipment, and medical devices. Subjects being discussed included everything from the latest in technology, to how to extend the life-cycle of life-saving equipment, without having to re-certify every single piece of the puzzle.

I got to speak to a representative with PDCI Medical, about the headaches that come if you consider changing the adhesive used in medical products, once it has already been approved by the FDA.

One Project Engineer talked about the struggle manufacturing is having in America with getting life-saving products and technology approved by the FDA. Yet a different manufacturer of diagnostic equipment expressed concerns about the boards in equipment their customers have come to rely on (and are still buying) going EOL.

Again, the conversations echoed the earlier thread; with people’s lives on the line, if your diagnostic equipment is going to pass all the certifications needed to be used in modern hospitals you can’t just decide to swap in a new board.

And while I got to immerse myself in a day full of medical design and manufacturing it wasn’t just the medical manufacturing conference that was large enough to require a month to absorb…

There were also NINE other events related to manufacturing, automation, and design also happening in the same place, the Anaheim Convention Center, at the same time.

With what turned out to be over 2,200 exhibitors in everything from e-waste, to additive manufacturing (3D Printing!), to precision tooling, and thermoforming; in the defense, aviation, automation, sustainable manufacturing, and medical industries. Suddenly being able to talk about what it means to bridge the gap in today’s current product life-cycle management takes on a picture of global and cross-industry proportions.

As the pioneer in COTS obsolescence management, GDCA is authorized by our OEM partners to continue to manufacture and repair the embedded legacy products critical to long-lasting applications. Using OEM-authorized IP and original specifications, GDCA provides repair, long-term customer support, manufacturing, and sustainment for over three thousand End-of-Life, COTS, and custom-embedded computer boards and systems.